Word: busoni
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...made his first real study of the score. He has had plenty of experience. Trained in Berlin by Egon Petri, he played concerts in Europe for four years before moving to the U.S. in 1929. He has made five previous New York appearances, notably a 1966 performance of Busoni's challenging Piano Concerto. But now the magnitude of what he has undertaken overwhelms him. At a hotel, he recites "a prayer to Ludwig for help," and drops off to sleep...
...BUSONI: CONCERTO FOR PIANO, ORCHESTRA AND MALE CHORUS (Angel; 2 LPs). A first recording of a huge, seldom heard work that dates in time to 1904 and in style to a still earlier romantic era. Ferruccio Busoni was a pianist in the tradition of Liszt. He was a teacher who boasted disciples rather than pupils (among them, Kurt Weill) and he was also a composer of grandiose notions and mixed talents, which are illuminated by English Pianist John Ogdon and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in this 70-minute work The introductory movement seems to be all stately facade, but once...
...Busoni did not live to see direction become destination. Worn out by half a century of continual concertizing, he died in 1924 at the age of 58. He was, in his own words, "a weak man, yet a stout wrestler, whom doubts drive hither and thither; master of thought, slave of instinct, exhausting all things, finding no answer." A Faustian figure...
...power was awesome, his speed be yond belief, his touch so delicately pre cise that he could transform the most complicated passages into washes of pure color. And yet technique was not an end in itself; Busoni invariably sub ordinated pianistic skill to musical mean ing. Passion and intelligence were reconciled in sensibility, and in the last years of his life, says Busoni's biographer Ed ward Dent, his performances reflected "the spirit of a seer and visionary" and achieved a "grandeur" amounting to "prophetic inspiration...
...time he was 40, Bu soni was sick of performing and wanted only to compose. During the summer, when the concert circuit closed down, he wrote music like a madman; and what he wrote, though not great music, is sometimes music of great fascination and historical importance. Busoni is an important moment of transition in mu sic. He falls between two styles, the romantic and the modern. In his struggle to reconcile the two, he helped to break up the romantic tradition and in his late compositions -the six Poly phonic Studies and the superb but rarely performed opera Doktor...